The Smile.jpg's Curse: A Grinning Horror
The Smile.jpg's Curse: A Grinning Horror
It started with a simple image file.
The day Emily downloaded Smile.jpg, everything in her life changed. She was a digital art student at Monroe University, working late on a horror-themed portfolio for her final project. Her friend, Jared, sent her the image through an encrypted folder, warning her jokingly, "Open it at your own risk."
"Yeah, yeah. Urban legend stuff, right?" Emily chuckled, clicking on the image. A grinning dog — not just any grin, but one that looked carved into its face — stared back at her. The background was blurry, almost smoky, and two glowing red dots hovered faintly behind the dog’s head.
The moment she looked into the dog's grin, she felt a chill settle in her bones. That night, she couldn’t sleep.
The dreams started immediately.
In her dreams, she wandered through empty, foggy streets. Every alley ended with that same face—the dog from Smile.jpg—grinning impossibly wide. Its eyes glowed, whispering her name.
"Emily... you smiled back... now you belong to me."
She would wake up in a cold sweat, heart pounding, the whisper echoing in her ears.
She tried deleting the image. It wouldn’t go. Every time she removed it, the file reappeared — sometimes renamed, sometimes on a different drive. Her phone, her tablet, even her roommate’s laptop began showing flickers of the grin.
One night, desperate, Emily confided in Jared.
"Jared, it’s not just a picture. It’s doing something to me. I can’t sleep, I can’t focus. It’s in my dreams... it speaks to me."
Jared’s face turned pale. "You opened it?" he whispered.
"Yes. Why? What is it really?"
"I got it from a forum on the dark web. They say it's cursed. That everyone who looks at it either goes mad or... disappears. I thought it was just creepypasta."
"It’s not just a story, Jared! It’s real!"
Emily grabbed his hand. "Please help me. There has to be a way to undo it."
Jared hesitated, then nodded. "There’s one guy. Username: 'Nocturn.exe'. Claims he broke the curse. But he’ll want something in return."
The two of them tracked Nocturn.exe to an obscure chatroom. The user agreed to talk.
Nocturn.exe: You’ve seen the Smile. It sees you now.
Emily: How do I stop it?
Nocturn.exe: You don’t. You pass it on. It needs a new face.
Jared: That’s not a solution. That’s spreading the curse!
Nocturn.exe: There is no ending it. Only surviving it. Or becoming part of it.
Emily’s heart sank. "So it’s either me or someone else?"
Jared looked horrified. "You’re not thinking of doing it, are you?"
She didn’t answer.
That night, Emily stayed up late again. The grin haunted her every blink. Her hands trembled as she hovered over a message box, dragging the image into the attachment field. A name was typed: someone she hadn’t talked to in years — an old classmate who had once bullied her cruelly.
She stared at the screen.
Was she really going to damn someone else?
The image flickered.
Whispers in her ear: "Smile... and be free."
Tears welled in her eyes as she hit send.
Three days later, the dreams stopped. The whispers faded. The image was gone from her devices.
But Jared knew.
"You did it, didn’t you?" he asked quietly.
Emily didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.
She smiled. A slow, too-wide grin stretching across her face.
"Emily...?"
"The Smile is never gone. It just moves on."
That night, Jared received a message from an unknown email. No subject. No text.
Just an image attached: Smile.jpg.
Jared didn't open it. Not yet. But he stared at it for hours, wondering what it would mean if he did. The temptation clawed at his mind like an itch he couldn't scratch. Was he strong enough to resist it?
Over the next few days, Jared noticed subtle changes. Reflections in mirrors lasted a beat too long. Static interrupted his favorite songs. Street lights flickered as he passed. And worst of all—he started seeing things in his dreams.
He’d find himself in that same foggy street Emily described, the grin always lurking at the edge of his vision. The whispers were faint, but growing louder.
"You’ve seen it now, Jared. You know the rules."
Frantic, he tried reaching out to Nocturn.exe again, but the account was gone. Deleted. Wiped clean. All messages erased as if they never existed. Emily, meanwhile, acted like everything was fine. But her laugh carried something unnatural now—a dry, echoing rasp.
Then the final straw came.
Jared’s little sister, Mia, only 14, came into his room holding his phone.
"Hey Jared, what’s this creepy picture you got? It was open on your screen."
His heart froze.
"You... you looked at it?"
She nodded slowly. "It’s just a weird dog, right? But I had the strangest dream last night..."
Jared was too late.
The curse had moved again. And this time, it spread like wildfire. Mia forwarded it to a friend as a prank. That friend shared it on a private Discord server. Within a week, the file had surfaced in multiple chatrooms, forums, and encrypted messages across the web.
It was viral.
People began reporting nightmares, hallucinations, and in rare cases, unexplained disappearances. News outlets speculated about digital hypnosis, psychological malware, and modern urban legends made real.
But those who had truly seen the image knew better. It wasn't about belief. It was about exposure.
Emily disappeared from Monroe University without a trace. Her dorm abandoned, laptop fried, phone shattered. Jared last saw her in one final dream—grinning wider than should be humanly possible, eyes glowing red, whispering:
"Smile, Jared. Smile... and join us."
Now, it’s your turn.
Will you look?
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